OILD: Sub-Zero Containment

Hey again! It’s now day number 6 of Obligatory Ice Level Day! We’re counting down to the Mario marathon on December 14th, when we’ll be raising money for the Make A Wish Foundation! Tune in for some awesome games and sweet prizes, like handmade wooden item blocks and a Wii U Deluxe! You know, I love awesome female game characters. We need more of them! And one of the best female game characters out there is the bounty hunter Samus Aran. Today’s ice level is the Sub-Zero Containment, from Metroid Fusion!

Sub-Zero Containment! No, it does not contain Sub-Zero, though that would have been pretty awesome too.

Metroid Fusion continues the story of Samus, the intergalactic bounty hunter who often clashed with the life-sucking monsters known as Metroids. In Fusion, parasites known as X attack a space station. Samus is infected with X, but it leads to her obtaining the power to stop them. By this point the X parasites have overrun the station, so she has to fight to survive, and to figure out how to stop them from spreading. Furthermore, there is an X parasite mimicking Samus herself, and this newly born “SA-X” stalks her at every turn.

Fusion actually does have a proper ice level, called ARC. ARC is a frozen sector of the station, and Samus can’t even explore the area safely without a Varia Suit. After acquiring the suit, she can grab the ice missiles and power bombs from ARC. However, there’s another frozen area in the station, and it’s Sub-Zero Containment. When you enter the area, you see the frozen corpse of… *gasp* Ridley! Yes, Ridley, the giant evil space dragon that Samus is not terrified of, no matter what anyone tells you. However, the dead body shatters the moment it’s touched, and an X parasite flies away from it. As it turns out, the parasite infected Ridley’s body, and has used his genetic information to transform into a creature called Neo-Ridley. I always thought Sub-Zero Containment was kind of creepy, because it’s one thing to assume a classic boss is dead, but it’s quite another to see a once-dangerous character reduced to nothing more than a frozen pile of meat. Poor dragon.

So I assume you also like it when female game characters rock, so here’s a special bonus! A few years back you may remember that I posted about Alpinia as an ice level for OILD. In that post, I explained that that world is from a game called The Legend of Kyrandia, and it starred a girl named Zanthia. It’s notable because Zanthia is one of the few old-school female game heroes, even though she’s pretty obscure. Well, a long time ago I also posted about four zombie-killing ladies that Zarla and I like to write about. And thus, for today’s bonus, we have an awesome pic Zarla did of the four ladies hanging out with Zanthia!